1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a apparatus cooperation system where plural apparatuses connected to each other via a network share and provide functions of the apparatuses among the apparatuses.
2. Description of the Related Art
The apparatuses such as copiers are generally provided to many businesses as clients on lease or rental basis. This is because those apparatuses generally require maintenance services. In this case, for example, the client pays not only a lease charge but also the other charge in accordance with the lease contract to a leasing company. To determine the other charge, there have been used a counter method and a toner kit method.
In the counter method, for example, the client pays an amount corresponding to a basic charge and a charge determined by the product of the number of printed pages by contracted unit price as a monthly charge.
Further, in the counter method, the client may usually have to pay a cost for consumable supplies (e.g., toner and other parts) and a maintenance and inspection charge including the costs of exchanging parts and adjustment of the apparatus.
On the other hand, in the toner kit method, the client purchases a toner kit. By doing this, the leasing company provides the maintenance service. In this method, the client may use the apparatus until the toner is empty by paying a fixed charge of the toner kit.
It is not possible to determine which of the methods is advantageous because it depends on the frequency of use of the client. However, if the apparatus is not used very frequently, the toner kit method may be recommended.
In the counter method, the charge depends on the (printed) pages. Therefore, it is necessary for the apparatus using the counter to count the number of the printed pages. Further, it is usually unknown whether the client makes a contract based on the counter method or the toner kit method when the apparatus is shipped from the factory. Therefore, almost all MFPs (apparatuses) include a function for counting the printed pages.
FIG. 1 schematically illustrates examples of billings when a user Q uses an apparatus (MFP 1) employing the toner kit method and an apparatus (MFP 2) employing the counter method. Namely, the MFP 1 is used under a billing contract based on the toner kit method, and the MFP 2 is used under a billing contract based on the counter method.
In case the user uses the MFP 1 to print, for example, 10 pages, due to the toner kit method, the MFP 1 does not have to count the number of printed pages. On the other hand, in case the user uses the MFP 2 to print 10 pages, due to the counter method, the MFP 2 counts the number of printed pages and the counted value is stored in the MFP 2.
On the other hand, there has been known a processing scheme in which plural apparatuses connected to each other via a network cooperate each other to perform a job (see, for example, Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2010-074431). This processing scheme may be called “apparatus cooperation”.
The “apparatus cooperation” herein refers to a scheme is which, for example, plural apparatus cooperate with each other by sharing and providing a function necessary for (executing) a job including a series of processes from input to output.
FIG. 2 illustrates an example how a job is executed in the processing scheme called “apparatus cooperation”. In FIG. 2, the MFP 1 and the MFP 2 are the same as those in FIG. 1. The user 2 is intended to print plural copies of image data. To that end, the user Q may use the MFP 1 only.
However, if the user Q uses not only the MFP 1 but also MFP 2 so that the print job is shared by the MFP 1 and the MFP 2, the user Q may finish printing faster. So as to print by sharing between the MFP 1 and the MFP 2, the user Q may operate the MFP 1 to scan the draft by the scanner of the MFP 1 and send the scanned image data along with the printing conditions to the MFP 2.